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Fields of Green Launches EP at Celtic Connections

8th January 2016

Back in 2007, while on tour with cult singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan, sitting on her third aeroplane of the day in a holding pattern above an American city, Jo Mango had a revelation about the potential impact of her itinerant job on the world and on herself. That moment led to some serious decisions about her lifestyle and an ongoing fascination with exploring the unsustainability of the musical life.

The EP’s title is an extension of those thoughts into a research project for which Jo enlisted the help of leading Scottish singer-songwriters Rachel Sermanni, RM Hubbert, Louis Abbott (Admiral Fallow) and The Pictish Trail. The songs they have written together explore a gamut of emotions related to travel, the environment and music.

The title “Wrack Lines” refers to the name given to the waving line of detritus that is left on the beach when the tide goes out. It calls to mind images of travelling across the ocean, but also the unmistakable residue of waste that is left behind us when we do. It is also an image of the creation of music (which itself is made from waves).

There are songs that are an expression of the need to keep moving and to keep finding new audiences to gain the kind of catharsis that makes life worth living. Others explore the off-kilter rhythms of living on the road. There is the tension between the material and the ephemeral: loneliness and exhaustion of constant travelling versus the uplifting glories of musical performance; the concrete and objective nature of the resources that we use up in order to reach audiences versus the unmeasurable and immaterial aspects of the music that is given back in return.

Each songwriter was tracked as they travelled across the 2015 festival season. Maps of their movement were used as the basis for the artwork (created by illustrator and designer Helen Kellock).

It was in snatches of time between those miles that the EP was recorded, wherever the artists’ paths could cross. Between the five of them they travelled approximately 118,000 passenger miles and generated 19,314kg of CO2 emissions. It’s a carbon footprint for the songwriting quintet which will leave its mark, in song and in Wrack Lines.

Wrack Lines will be released on CD and on digital format through Olive Grove Records on 15 January 2016. Rachel Sermanni, Louis Abbott, RM Hubbert, The Pictish Trail and Jo Mango celebrate the launch of the new EP with a one-off performance at Platform in Glasgow on 21 January 2016 as part of Celtic Connections. Find out more and order tickets here.

All profits from the sale of this EP will go to the charity Creative Carbon Scotland in their work to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland.

The EP forms part of a research project called Fields of Green: Addressing Climate Change Through Music Festival Communities. It aims to explore what audiences, organisers and musicians can do to encourage environmentally sustainable behaviour around music festivals. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (Grant Number AH/M009270/1) and is a collaboration between researchers at the University of the West of Scotland, Edinburgh University, Lancaster University and the charity Creative Carbon Scotland.

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